by Peter Johansen
Jonah Brotman, BA’07, knows the value of student internships. His career was inspired by one.
In 2006, the communication studies major went to Ghana, where he stayed with a local family and worked at an all-gospel radio station, writing news updates.
The trip was organized through an African non-governmental organization.
Jonah Brotman (left), in Sandema, Ghana, during the construction of a new orphanage for boys called the Horizon Children's Centre.
But Jonah returned feeling the NGO didn’t offer him exactly what he wanted. “It was hard for them to understand the realities of what a 20-year-old Canadian kid wants to do,” he explains. “It was a fun trip, though, so I wondered why not bring the experience to other students.”
That’s how, during his last year at Carleton, Jonah found himself setting up Operation Groundswell, a non-profit organization that gives 18-to-30 year-olds the chance to travel, know the locals, and volunteer for community-building projects.
Those projects vary from building a school in Guatemala to working on sports programs in Rwanda.
This summer, the non-profit group is mounting 20 trips.
Between projects, the travelers will also do the usual backpacker-style sightseeing. The ratio of travel to volunteering varies from trip to trip, offering welcome variety to Groundswell’s 200 participants.
That’s a far cry from 2007, when Jonah enlisted just 11 students – mostly “friends and friends of friends,” he admits. Most were Carleton students.
Jonah says this university is still an active source of participants, but now clients hail from across the country, and the U.S. and England as well.
To underscore the humanitarian focus, each participant must raise $1,000 that’s fully used for microfinance loans, in-country projects and carbon offsetting.
For Jonah, the ultimate satisfaction is bringing young people abroad: “Very few have gone to the developing world. It opens their eyes to the fact people are people everywhere.”
He and business partner David Berkal see their mission as breaking Western apathy. “We’re seeing our alumni do great things now,” he proudly says. “Young people are the future change-makers. Real change in the world will come from them.”
Meanwhile, he says the holistic experience participants experience is “the coolest tutorial you could ever take.”
For more information: www.operationgroundswell.com.